As the progress of Mr. Banks and his party would necessarily partake of the nature of caravan movements, Mr. Neuchamp decided, after a few days of co-operative wayfaring, to go ahead of his impediment. He would thus be spared thegêneof objectless camp life and needless expenditure of time. With regard to the value of this latter commodity, he began to lean to the opinion of Mr. Parklands, and to believe that time was ever in a colony, if not always a synonym for money, at least a matter of high consideration. Apart from this method of reasoning, his route after a while lay through a district which he had never before visited. And a portion of the locality promised to be interesting to the observer of men and manners for a novel reason.
He had since found that the owner of the large herd which Mr. Levison had purchased, as another buyer would have bought a team of bullocks or a flock of sheep, had been compelled to sell on account of the sudden influx of miners upon his run. Gold—the healer, the benefactor, the deliverer, the slayer, the betrayer, the enslaver of mankind in every age, in every clime—had been discovered in the vicinity of the long-silent peaceful valleys in which Abel Drifter’s cattle had roamed for more than a generation. Now all was changed: the green dales were invaded by noisy crowds, the waters were polluted, the air was thick with the smoke of camp-fires, maddening with the barking of dogs, the crashing of falling trees. Droves of hobbled horses attended by reckless boys, who galloped and wantoned over the sacred camp, filled the woods with alarm and distraction for the confused, terrified cattle and their despairing stockmen.
Believing if he hesitated that probably half his herd would wander off the run and the other half disappear by dying, Mr. Drifter put the whole herd into his agents’ hands for sale, and, as we have named, found a prompt purchaser in Mr. Levison. It was this dread alternative of landmarks, this solemn, dismaying change of the pastoral stage into that of trade and agriculture, which Mr. Neuchamp had been curiously eager to behold.
Passing through that division of the great plain-ocean which varied in very slight degree from his own particular appointment, he entered upon a wholly different description of country, the characteristic peculiarities of which were clearly manifest to him. In the place of the torrid plains and rare watercourses which he had traversed for many days, he saw green park-like woodlands, pleasantly diversified by the long-absent hill and dale. Broad and fertile valleys adorned the landscape, from which many a harvest had been gathered since the first sod was turned. The houses of the proprietors were in some instances large and handsome, surrounded by shrubberies and orchards of ancient growth, or they bore the homely aspect of snug farmhouses, befitting the homes of sturdy, prosperous yeomen.
Fencing of a substantial and contradictory nature abounded, so that Ernest was more than once debarred from cross-country travelling, and forced to adhere to the high road. He noticed that during the morning and evening hours the air was cool occasionally to keenness. The magnificent distances to which he had become accustomed between the homesteads had narrowed to something, if not identical with British habit, at any rate to far nearer propinquity than he had deemed possible in Australia. From all these signs and appearances Mr. Neuchamp decided that he had come upon a new and different phase of colonisation, and prepared himself to investigate and analyse accordingly.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘is one of the cheering results of that human hive-swarming which we call emigration. How many of these comfortably-placed landholders, enjoying a charming climate, a fertile soil, and that abundance of elbow-room which every Anglo-Saxon needs, were peasant labourers, pinched and over-laboured, small farmers, or impoverished gentry, landless, tradeless, coinless younger sons in Europe? Here they have found their proper métier. Here they have repeated history and have peopled a new world, under the Southern Cross, where the passionate freedom of their forefathers may be handed down unblemished to the sons of the grandest of races.’
As he travelled this settled region the population necessarily commenced to show signs of alteration, both as to character and density. Instead of the sparse, sunburned, nomadic units of the waste, the more various and pronounced types of agriculture and grazing industry presented themselves frequently and unmistakably.
Mr. Neuchamp hailed with pleasure the opportunity thus afforded of conversation and companionship. He saw the neat taxed-cart, with the farmers’ wives and buxom daughters returning from the weekly market. He saw the farmer himself mounted upon a stout, not over-refined hackney, jogging along the road with the bluff confidence inspired by good crops and good prices. He marked the great fields of maize alternating with hay and cereals, while the wide-fenced pastures, with the clover, lucerne, and the prairie-grass of America, were thickly filled with thriving cattle or the long-woolled sheep, with which his eye had been familiar in his native country.
‘People in England fancy,’ he thought, pursuing his ordinary train of thought, ‘that life in Australia is principally devoted to lying under the shade of tropical forest-trees, and eating peaches or pineapples; or else that a course of violent and exciting border life is unremittingly hazarded. How little the average British mind is capable of comprehending the widely various conditions of colonial life, necessarily distinct and sharply defined, from the influences of varying soil, climate, and original settlement, with a hundred other underlying laws, by these centuries passed into the one concrete idea of “the colonist.” As reasonable would it be to mingle the attributes of the Devon or Suffolk peasant—the Celtic Irishman, the Lowland Scot, the Cockney, and the Highlander, under the general name of Englishman.’
On the day when these truly original ideas had occurred to Mr. Neuchamp he was riding contentedly along the fenced highway with the intention of reaching at nightfall the homestead of a landed proprietor of some mark in his own district, whose acquaintance he had made at the New Holland Club. He was certain of hospitality and of receiving the clearest directions as to his route. Within a few miles of his destination, as he calculated, he encountered a gentleman, on a well-bred hack, who had just emerged from a lane at right angles with the road.
He replied to the stranger’s courteous and unaffected greeting with an inquiry as to the precise distance of Mr. Haughton’s house—if perchance he happened to be aware of it.
‘I am going within a mile of the entrance gate,’ said the stranger; ‘I shall be happy to be your guide so far. I shall probably be at Elmshurst to lunch to-morrow, and should be there to-night—but that I have to visit a sick parishioner.’
Mr. Neuchamp had partly conjectured from the dress of the gentleman that he was in holy orders, and of course the point was settled by his admission.
‘You are then the clergyman of this district?’ said he. ‘You are fortunate, I should say, in the locality of your labours.’
‘Yes,’ said the stranger, rather absently, ‘there is no fault to be found with the climate or the scenery, and I have not met in my travels with a more pleasant and kindly society. There is but one defect, and that is universal.’
‘And that is, may I ask?’
‘Earnestness, thoroughness,’ said the stranger, fixing his clear sad eye upon Mr. Neuchamp. ‘If those whose duty it is to provide aid and comfort for the souls that are like Lazarus, lying at their gates, leprous and diseased in mind,—if they would but give of their substance, or better still, a hundred times better, of their time and energy,—much, how much, could be done for God and for man.’
‘I passed a very neat church and schoolhouse just now,’ affirmed Ernest; ‘surely matters spiritual are regarded here with interest, and if the enthusiasm you lament be wanting, when and in what land is it to be found?’
‘I speak not,’ said the unknown, a glow of fervour lighting up a pale handsome countenance, and illumining his melancholy dark eyes—‘I speak not of the mere routine donations which reach respectable uniformity and stop there. I speak of the want of the spirit that maketh alive, and in one class not more than in others. The vicarious aid, it is true, is not sparingly or grudgingly given. But the heart’s tribute—the life-donation—where is it?’
‘I am sorry that it should be so,’ said Ernest, thinking what a glorious pastor this zealous missionary would be for his community at Rainbar, when it was sufficiently grown and established. ‘I am afraid none of us who are somewhat fully endowed with this world’s goods do a tenth part as much as we might. But I do not see how matters are to be mended as the world whirls on its appointed course. Enthusiasm is dead, and belief will soon follow.’
‘We might all do much—you will excuse my professional tone of exhortation,’—said this latter-day apostle, ‘by performing our own distinctly laid down duties personally and rigidly, to arrest the dreary tendency you refer to—to plant the seeds of a richer and a more vigorous religious growth. I have not the pleasure of knowing your name; permit me to present my card. I trust that we shall meet again under circumstances more favourable for discussion and mutual acquaintance.’
‘Thanks, I shall only be too happy. I am Mr. Neuchamp, of Rainbar, where I should be delighted to see you if circumstances ever lead to your visiting so distant a locality.’
‘I don’t know where my Father’s work may take me; but be assured that I shall be much gratified by any chance which involves future intercourse with one of kindred sentiments.’
Mr. Neuchamp gazed at the speaker, and thought he had rarely seen a more uncommon countenance. Still young, he was perhaps nearer to the goal of middle age than to the ‘spring of springs’ of early youth. The outline of the features was aristocratic and refined. His slight but symmetrical figure, in its careless ease of seat on horseback, suggested more extended practice in youth than was quite compatible with his present position. But the eye, mild, searching, calmly radiant, was the conspicuous feature. It showed the steady unfaltering regard of one ever willing to attest with his blood the truth of the doctrines which he held.
‘We pass through these rails,’ said he, ‘and enter this lane, soon after which my path turns off and I leave you.’
As he pointed to the slip-rails Mr. Neuchamp spurred forward to prevent his having the trouble to take them down, and practised a manœuvre of which he was rather proud.
He stooped from his saddle, and, raising the top rail, placed it carefully upon the second. Then wheeling Osmund for a stride backward, that accomplished animal leaped easily over, without the slightest hesitation.
‘Come along, sir,’ said Ernest to the clergyman; ‘it is no height, and I will put it up.’
‘Thanks, no; you must really excuse me.’
Ernest reiterated his assurances that it was extremely low—no danger, and so on.
All unmoved by Mr. Neuchamp’s requests and entreaties, the gentleman with the black coat and gray trousers quietly alighted, saying, ‘You must excuse me, I do not leap at all.’ He then took down the two lower rails and, replacing them, gravely remounted.
‘Do you not think,’ said Ernest, ‘considering the large amount of cross-country work that a clergyman has to do in Australia, that every gentleman of your profession should practise leaping a little—I mean sufficiently to get over middle rails, and so on? you might be stopped by a low fence.’
‘It may be so; there is force in your argument,’ said the unknown, with a grave sad smile, ‘but I do not care about leaping now, and there is then only one course open, that of taking down the rails. After all there are so many necessary gates, I find that I can generally get about my various duties.’
‘Really,’ persisted Ernest, ‘I hope that you will not think me impertinent, but in a new country like this surely every one ought to train himself to encounter the exigencies of his position, and your seat is so firm that I am sure with a little practice you would soon be able to get over a moderate leap.’
Ernest thought he saw an approach to a smile flit over the thoughtful face of his clerical acquaintance.
‘Who knows?’ he said, holding out his hand; ‘I trust we shall meet again. It may be that we shall be fellow-workers in this good land, where the harvest is plentiful, but the reapers, alas! few. Good-bye.’
Mr. Neuchamp pursued the path indicated, which led him to a substantial country-house, of which the well-kept approaches and trim, yet luxuriant shrubberies told of long and successful occupation. Here he was warmly welcomed, and Osmund promptly delivered to a neat groom.
‘Very glad to meet you in the country,’ said his host, a frank, stout, gray-haired, but vigorous-looking man. ‘What do you think of our district—anything like this on the Lower Darling? I hear you have settled yourself permanently there.’
‘The two districts are about as similar as the West Riding of Yorkshire and the Pampas,’ said Ernest. ‘But Rainbar is a very good fattening country; that is all one can say in its favour just now.’
‘Plenty of room, no diggers, no free selectors,’ replied his host; ‘well, I wish we could say as much here. I am too old to change now; but I think if I was your age again, I should be inclined to move out back; let the Grange, and come back to be comfortable here in my old age. But I think I heard the dinner-bell. Come along.’
Ernest heard it too, and was by no means sorry to comply with the summons. Dinner-bells, with the accompanying refections of civilised man, had been rather out of his line of late. He was introduced to the lady of the house, and her well-dressed, fresh-complexioned, cheerful-looking daughters, the very sight of whom raised the spirits of Mr. Neuchamp several degrees.
An active, keen-looking youngster of sixteen made up the family party.
Ernest Neuchamp was approved of by the ladies of the household, as indeed was generally the case, being one of those sympathetic and genial persons whom women instinctively take into favour. The conversation had become general and sprightly pleasant, when, in answer to a question about his travelling alone, he happened to mention that he had met, he supposed, the clergyman, not far from their house.
‘There is more than one clergyman in our district,’ said the lady of the house, ‘but I daresay we shall recognise him from your description.’
‘He was a gentlemanlike person, rather handsome, indeed,’ continued he. ‘It seems an odd thing, though, that clergymen, as a rule, ride so indifferently, and especially in a new country like this, where the necessity of long journeys might have given them practice, one would think; yet I could not get your friend to follow me over a middle rail.’
‘What?’ said his host, with a look of altogether inexplicable astonishment mixed with amusement visible in his face; ‘did you give him a lesson in riding?’
‘I tried,’ said Ernest; ‘I am sure his horse would have followed mine if he had mustered up courage, and put him at it. I tried all I knew to induce him, and said that with a little practice I was sure he would soon be able to take moderate jumps.’
‘Moderate jumps! oh, Lord!’ said his entertainer; ‘and what answer did he make?’
‘He smiled gravely, and said, “Who knows?” then bade me good-bye. I hope he was not offended.’
‘Ha! ha! ha!’ yelled the youngster, exploding helplessly. ‘Oh dear! oh! I’ll lay anything, papa, it was Mr. Heatherstone. I shall die! I know I shall. What a jolly sell!’
The girls struggled with their emotions—one hid her face in her handkerchief. The lady of the house smiled, but tried to look grand, and reproved her son, who continued to shriek with suppressed laughter, and finally bolted out of the room, as the safer proceeding.
His host, making desperate efforts at self-control, said, at length, in a broken voice, ‘My dear fellow! you mustn’t mind these young people. I’m afraid they are laughing at a little mistake you must have made as to our clergyman’s degree in equestrianism. But are we sure of our man—did you learn his name?’
‘He gave me his card,’ said Ernest, now shuddering under the consciousness of having, perhaps, again buried himself in a pitfall in this provoking happy hunting-ground, ‘but I never looked at it. Here it is—“The Rev. Egbert Heatherstone.”’
Here the second young lady broke down, while her mamma laughed decorously and under protest as it were; and paterfamilias, in analmoststeady voice, thus spoke—
‘You never heard of Heatherstone before, then? No? Well—the man you were trying to lure over a middle rail was formerly known, that is, before he entered the Church from strong convictions, as perhaps the boldest, the most reckless rider in Australia. He has ridden more steeplechases than you have hairs on your heads, I was going to say—but, to speak moderately, a larger number than most men living. Since he became a clergyman, a most sincere and hard-working one, he has given up sensational riding, and being passionately fond of horses, mortifies the flesh by abstaining from all that style of thing. You will excuse us all, I know, for being so rude; but really, you must admit the joke was irresistible.’
‘I see—I admit—I confess,’ said Ernest, with an air of deepest penitence. ‘If I could only do penance for my sins of superficial judgment, it would be such a relief. Do you think the Rev. Egbert has a trifle of spare sackcloth?’
‘You didn’t notice his seat on horseback?’ asked one of the young ladies innocently. ‘Doesn’t he look like a horseman? He can’t hidethat, or help his hands being so perfect—though I think he tries.’
‘He rode a horse over a three-railed fence once, without saddle or bridle,’ said the other sister, ‘for a bet; before he was ordained.’
‘He took Ingoldsby, the great steeplechaser, over a three-railed fence at twelve o’clock at night, and pitch dark too; there was a lantern on each post though,’ chimed in the sixteen-year-old hero-worshipper of any reckless deed in saddle or harness.
‘The maddest thing of all that I ever heard of him,’ affirmed papa, in conclusion, ‘was going across country one evening and taking sixteen wire fences running. He won his bets, but he had two hardish falls; one a collar-boner, into the bargain.’
‘I really begin to think,’ said Mr. Neuchamp despairingly, after every one had transacted a good downright unrestrained chuckle, ‘that I shall never become fully acclimatised. This is the most peculiar and utterly unintelligible country ever discovered; or, am I devoid of understanding to an extent which disables me from ever rating individuals at their proper value?’
He was eventually consoled, and persuaded into singing second in a duet whereto the accompaniment was played with much taste and expression by one of the daughters of the house. He was perfectly at home in this department of criticism, and after receiving a few compliments upon his extremely correct performances, he commenced to forget the stupendous miscalculation into which he had been led with respect to the Reverend Egbert Heatherstone and his equitation. But it was not forgotten by the inmates of the house and the inhabitants of the district, among whom it gradually spread. It always took rank among those glorious jests which, intelligible to every degree of capacity, float on with undiminished grandeur from generation to generation; and a stranger who reached that peaceful district, and was discovered by a delicate course of inquiry never to have heard that joke, was regarded with affectionate interest, and had it so carefully administered to him that not one drop of theelixir jocosusshould be wasted in the process.
Leaving the honoured abode of hospitality and domestic happiness, with its fertile meadows and well-filled stackyards, Mr. Neuchamp pursued his route quietly, intending to make his way to the property of another friend, whose place was at no great distance from the goldfield town near which was the station upon which his cattle were still depasturing. This stage was rather far for one day. He was considering whether he might expect to meet with a reasonable inn, and humming a souvenir of his last night’s concert, when a horseman, coming at a brisk pace in the opposite direction, met him face to face.
In him he recognised a young squatter whom he had often encountered in Sydney in various festive scenes, and who had more than once pressed him to visit his station, if he should find himself in their district. Ernest knew the station of Baldacre Brothers by reputation to be large and rich. In fact the brand had a colonial fame. His curiosity was somewhat aroused to behold the establishment.
Mr. Hardy Baldacre expressed great concern that he should be just leaving home for a journey when his friend Mr. Neuchamp was coming into the district, and made many excuses for not turning back—finally asking Ernest how far he thought of going that night. He mentioned the house of the brother of Colonel Branksome.
‘Oh! that is too far,’ said Mr. Baldacre; ‘sixty miles, if it is a yard.’
‘I don’t think I will try to get quite so far,’ said Ernest. ‘Probably there is some inn which will do as a half-way house.’
‘Oh! you’d better stay at our place,’ said his friend with an expression of countenance not wholly intelligible to Ernest. ‘It’s about twenty-five miles from here, straight on the road; you can’t miss it. You’ll find my brother William at home. Good-bye!’
With this somewhat laconic invitation he put spurs to his horse and rode forward at a hand gallop, leaving Ernest undecided as to whether he should accept or decline an invitation not very graciously extended.
By the time, however, that he had got to the end of the rather long twenty-five miles over a worse road than he had hitherto travelled, he discovered that there was no other stage available without over-riding Osmund, so he commenced to look about for the homestead of the Messrs. Baldacre Brothers of Baredoun.
It was nearly dark when he came to a hut by the side of the road, situated in a small paddock, the upper rails of the fence of which were ornamented with sheepskins to an extent which suggested that a new material for enclosures was being tested. Resolved to make inquiry as to this mysteriously invisible homestead, Mr. Neuchamp holloaed to the occupant of the hut in a loud and peremptory manner.
A man in his shirt-sleeves came to the door, not otherwise over-neat, and smoking a black pipe.
‘Can you tell me where Baredoun is?’ demanded Ernest: ‘it ought to be somewhere about here, I should think.’
‘This is the place,’ said the shirt-sleeved one coolly.
‘And isthisthe home station of Baldacre Brothers?’ inquired Ernest, vainly trying to disguise his astonishment.
‘It’s all that’s of it,’ said the smoker, with an attempt at jocularity. ‘I’m William Baldacre; won’t you come in and stay the night? It’s rather late, and there is no place within fifteen miles.’
Ernest stared before him, around, and finally behind, before he answered the hospitable question. He made a mental calculation as to whether it was worth while to push Osmund on for fifteen miles over an unknown road in the dark. Finally, he decided to sacrifice his comfort for that night to the welfare of the gallant grey, and to accept the ultra-primitive hospitality of Mr. Baldacre.
‘I met your brother, whom I had the pleasure of knowing,’ he said, ‘a few miles back. He was good enough to ask me to take up my quarters here to-night. I shall be very glad to stay with you.’
‘All right,’ said the elder man, a plain and unpolished personage when compared with his handsome, well-dressed younger brother, who swelled about the metropolis, by no means as if he had emerged from such a hovel. ‘Give me your horse; he’ll be safe in this paddock. Ours is rather a rough shop, but you must make allowances for the bush.’
Sadly and sorrowfully, after he had seen Osmund left free in the small moderately-grassed paddock, did Mr. Neuchamp follow his host into the hut. That building consisted of two small rooms. There was an earthen floor, one or two stools, a small fixed table, far from clean. A bed at the side of the room offered a more comfortable seat than the stools, and upon this Ernest deposited his weary bones and disappointed entity, wondering doubtfully whether sleep would be uninterrupted or otherwise.
The usual meal of corned meat, damper, and milkless tea was brought in by the hutkeeper of the period, whose moleskins were strictly in keeping with the prevailing tone of the furniture and apartment. Much Ernest wondered at the precise mental condition which could suffer two free agents of legal age, the owners of a proverbially rich and extensive run, of a well-known highly-bred herd, free from debt and incumbrances, to live in a state of squalid savagery. He did not exactly put his questionings into this shape, but his manner had expressed a patent astonishment, which his host seemed to consider himself called upon to answer.
‘We haven’t done much in the building way here,’ he remarked apologetically, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. ‘I daresay we’ll put up a cottage next year. But the old man never would spend a penny on the run here. He was snug enough at the old farm down the country, and somehow I’ve got used to the life, and it does me as well as any other. Hardy isn’t often at home; he’s half his time in Sydney. So he manages to hang it out here when he comes to help muster and so on. I reckon he thinks it saves money, and as he hasn’t to live herehedon’t care.’
Ernest felt remorseful after this explanation, very simply delivered, at his feelings of disgust and disapproval. ‘Suppose,’ he asked himself, ‘Ihad been set down here, a raw schoolboy, transplanted from half-learned tasks to the daily labour, the rude association, the unbroken loneliness of a distant station, debarred by a penurious old father from the smallest outlay not immediately connected with the herd, without books, change, society, or recreation, would it have been all-impossible that I should have grown into the mould in which my host is enclosed, or settled down into the resigned, sad-visaged man of five-and-thirty whom I see before me?’ Itwouldhave been impossible in his case, he thought. Still he could enter sufficiently into the probabilities of the situation to comprehend the injustice to which the mental development of the elder brother had been exposed.
‘Good heavens!’ he thought to himself, ‘what short-sighted idiots are parents who shut up their sons’ lives in a moral dungeon like this! The abiding in the wilderness is nothing; nay, it has positively beneficial and ennobling tendencies. But this sordid imprisonment of the mind! No books, no companions, no ideas; for how can there be a circulation of ideas if reading, conversation, reflection be wanting?—the whole mind bent and fettered to the level of the branding pen and the cattle market—the smallest outlay affording a glimpse of the heaven of Art and Literature churlishly denied, lest a few broad pieces escape the all-gathering muck-rake. And when the game is played out, the long harvest-day over, and the crop garnered, what is the grand result for which a soul has been starved—a man’s all-wondrous brain-marvel, miracle of miracles, enchantment before which all magic palls—stunted, and shrivelled from lack of nutriment and exercise, like a baby-farmed infant’s body? A few hundreds or thousands, more or less; a sufficiency of clothes and food; a surety against poverty; and the possibly fully-developed son of the immortal, “a little lower than the angels,” remains hopeless, contracted, with the mind of an untaught child plus an experience of the more obvious forms of dissipation!’
The rude meal concluded, and the pannikins refilled, Ernest, as usual, felt sufficiently refreshed in spirit to examine his immediate materials. Mr. Baldacre smoked and talked unreservedly for a couple of hours; explained the presence of the sheepskins—they had been butchering for the diggers lately; described some of their pioneer life, including an adventure with a bushranger, the famous Captain Belville; and, finally, thought Ernest might like to ‘turn in.’
Mr. Neuchamp looked distrustfully at the rude wooden frame, upon which sheepskins did duty for a mattress, and a pair of highly uninteresting blankets represented all other description of bedclothes. He protected himself against all nocturnal dangers by retaining the larger proportion of his habiliments, and desperately committed himself to the uncertainty. At earliest dawn he might have been seen leading Osmund towards the hut, after which he saddled up with unusual energy and care. He then betook himself to a grand deep water-hole at no great distance in the creek, where he swam and disported himself for half an hour at least, after which he indulged temperately in the pleasures of the table, as represented by a breakfast which was the facsimile of supper, and immediately thereafter bade his host good-bye, thanking him for his entertainment, and bidding farewell to the abode of Baldacre Brothers for ever.
Mr. Neuchamp smiled to himself when fairly on his way, thinking of the days of his inexperience, when he believed that all squatters, and indeed all colonists, lived in precisely the same fashion, and were characterised by identically the same habitudes and modes of life.
He certainly had been ‘had,’ as Mr. Banks would have said, in the matter of trusting himself to the primitive establishment of the Baldacres, who were well known to every one in the district to live ‘like blackfellows,’ as the phrase ran. But neither he nor Osmund had suffered anything more than slight temporary inconvenience. Mr. Neuchamp was specially good at recovering, and in half an hour he was whistling and humming along the road as blithely as ever.
On this particular day he expected to reach, at an early hour, the abode of another club acquaintance, who had been unaffectedly hearty in impressing upon him the desirability of making his place his headquarters if he ever came to their district. At this house he expected to meet the Indian Officer who had so kindly taken care of his Arab steed for him and attended to his comforts on board the P. and O. This distinguishedmilitairehad seen a good deal of service, but thirty-five years’ exposure to the sun of Hindostan had not quenched his ardour for sport, spoiled his seat on horseback, or cooled his devotion to the fair sex. He had been commissioned by the Indian Government to make large purchases of horses in Australia for remount service, particularly for artillery and heavy cavalry. He was now on a tour of inspection through the chief breeding districts, to the end that the couple of thousand troop horses he was empowered to purchase and ship might do credit to his judgment. Combining, as he did, a frank yet polished address with the prestige of military rank, important services during the Mutiny, consummate knowledge of horseflesh, with a potentiality of unlimited purchase, Colonel Branksome was at that time, perhaps, the most popular man in Australia.
It was on the right side of lunch-time when Mr. Neuchamp found himself opening a neat white gate, at the end of a well-kept drive, which further conducted him to the front door of a stately mansion, with easy circumstances and good taste written in every yard of the well-mown lawn, on every clump of the crowded shrubbery, on the long range of stabling at no inconvenient distance, even in the neat dress and respectful manner of the groom who came to take his horse almost as soon as he had dismounted.
The hall door opened in a spontaneously hospitable manner, and the host, accompanied by a middle-aged man very carefully attired in unmistakable mufti, left no doubt on any one’s mind as to his pleasure in receiving him.
‘Just in time for lunch, Neuchamp! Very glad you’ve found your way to our district. The Colonel, here, has just been thrashing me at billiards; let me introduce you: Colonel Branksome—Mr. Neuchamp.’
‘Happy to meet you,’ said the Colonel; ‘find the morning hot? Deuced nice horse of yours; you haven’t a few like him for sale, have you? I could take a hundred, and pay well too. But, of course, he’s a favourite; all the good ones are hereabouts.’
‘I am almost sorry to say that he is,’ said Ernest, ‘since I should have liked to have helped you to a few horses that would have done credit to Australia. I believe I have to thank you for an important service in procuring justice for my Arab on his voyage out.’
‘A mere matter of course,’ said the Colonel. ‘I knew Granby who shipped him, and the old sheik who sold him; personal friend, and all that; besides, I can’t see a handsome horse or a pretty woman without taking the strongest interest in their welfare. Weakness of mine all my life. Too old to mend now, I’m afraid.’
‘By George! I forgot the lunch,’ said the host, looking at his watch. ‘Come into my dressing-room, Neuchamp. Billy, you know your way.’
In a few minutes, after a temporary toilet, Ernest found himself in a large cool room, the furniture and arrangements of which betokened no hint of the considerable distance from the metropolis. Two pretty girls, whose complexions told of a cooler climate than that of the coast cities, and drew forth many a compliment from the susceptible warrior, embellished the well-appointed lunch-table. Here, with cool wine, delicate viands, and civilised society, Mr. Neuchamp was enabled utterly to discharge from his mind the unsavoury surroundings of his previous stage. Before they had finished the repast the eldest son of the house came in, apologising for his want of punctuality, but laying the blame upon a large body of miners whom he had been supplying with rations, and who had detained him until their wants were satisfied.
‘Really!’ said Mr. Branksome, ‘the consumption of meat is becoming tremendous. Stock must rise directly. I feared that we were all going to be ruined at first. Now, I see plainly that it will be all the other way.’
‘So, then, I suppose I must have made a good bargain in conjunction with Mr. Levison,’ affirmed Ernest tentatively.
‘Oh! you bought the “bar circle” cattle, then?’ said young Branksome. ‘They told me they expected a gentleman to take delivery directly. They are the best bred cattle in this district. You were lucky to buy them.
‘Poor Drifter,’ said the old gentleman, ‘it was anything but lucky forhimthat he was forced to sell them. I told him that he was hasty, but he was full of visions of their being killed and driven away right and left by the mining population, and would not hear reason.’
‘The miners are very decent fellows, what I have seen of them,’ said the son. ‘Of course there will be all sorts among them; but he would have no greater risk of losing his cattle at their hands than with many others.’
‘Not so bad as Sepoys, eh, Billy?’ said the host; ‘and yet I suppose you trusted the villains to the last minute.’
‘Well, I did,’ said the Colonel, ‘and I’m not ashamed to say so; and so would you if you had seen them fight and die by your side for many a year as I had done. There were some splendid fellows among them—“true to their salt” to the last. It was a great chance that I wasn’t shot down by my own men, like Howard and Weston, and many other commanding officers.’
‘How did you escape, uncle?’ said one of the young ladies, deeply interested.
‘Well, I’d been out at daylight with a scratch pack of hounds hunting jackals. Just as I was coming in, the old havildar (I had saved his life once) came rushing out: “No go home, sahib,” he said, “men all mad since chupatties come; shot Captain, sahib, Lieutenant, sahib, Major, sahib, and his men, sahib, hide away. Ride away, sahib.” And he hung on to my horse’s rein.
‘“Let me go, you old fool,” I said, “I must go back; the men will hearme. It’s those rascally Brahmins.”
‘“You give life, sahib, you do no good,” he cried out, and, by Jove! the tearsdidroll down his face. “I give my life for the Colonel, sahib, if he please. All no use. Look there!” and he pointed to where a long line of flame was rising up from my bungalow and stable.
‘“Where’s Lady Jane?” I roared; “you don’t mean to tell me they’ve taken her? I won’t leaveherif I die for it.”
‘“Lukehmeen syce, he very good man, he go away with Lady Jane this morning; go away to Raneepore. She all safe.”
‘“By Jove,” I said, “that’s good news. If Lady Jane was there now, I believe I should have gone in among the rascally Pandies with my sword and revolver, and seen it out.”’
‘How brave of you, Uncle William,’ said one of the girls, her cheeks glowing and her lips trembling with excitement, as she gazed admiringly at the Colonel’s hawk nose and bright blue eyes, which nearly matched his turquoise ring. ‘And did the poor lady escape altogether?’
‘Lady?’ said the latter-day Paladin, in tones of astonishment. ‘Lady Jane was a thoroughbred English mare that I’d just given three hundred for, worse luck, for I never did see her again, or any of my goods and chattels, from that day to this.’
‘And what did you do then, uncle?’ said the other sister, the humane sympathiser with Lady Jane being too much astonished and discomposed to continue the examination.
‘I was on my old Arab, Roostoom, luckily,’ said the Colonel, ‘a horse known all over India. When I saw there was nothing for it, I turned his head straight across country for Delhi, and after missing a few shots, rode one hundred and thirty miles before I stopped. Next morning I fell in with a troop of irregular horse of Jacob’s, and stayed with them till we entered Delhi together at the Cashmere gate. I say, we have squared accounts with the Pandies; and I thought we were going to ride over to the diggings after lunch.’
Accordingly, about three o’clock, behold the whole party, including the two young ladies and Mr. Neuchamp, mounted and cantering along the extremely well-marked road which led to the mining township of Turonia. The young ladies rode with grace and spirit upon well-groomed, well-bred horses, drawing forth many encomiums from the horse-loving and gallant Colonel, who said that their steeds would fetch a thousand rupees in Calcutta, and the young ladies receive half a dozen proposals of marriage the very first day they appeared on the Maidan.
The young ladies, in return, declared that there was only one man in the district to be compared to their uncle; and as he sat with easy military seat upon a strikingly handsome thoroughbred bay, with a star, the whole affair, from the well-brushed hat to lower spur-leather, ‘exquisite as a piece of lace,’ he justified their appreciation. As they neared the widely-extended collection of huts, shafts, heaps of mullock, and imposing structures of weatherboard and iron, thronged with a stalwart army, ten thousand strong, of bronzed and bearded gold-miners, they were joined by a semi-military-looking personage, dressed in uniform not all devoid of gold lace, and followed by a highly efficient-looking, well-mounted trooper.
‘Ha! Stanley,’ said Mr. Branksome, ‘well met; how do you do? This is my friend, Mr. Frank Stanley, the Commissioner of the goldfield. Allow me to introduce you to him. Are your subjects peaceable enough to venture among; and how does the escort get on?’
‘I will answer for my diggers,’ said Mr. Stanley, bowing to the young ladies, ‘being the most genuinely polite people in the world, especially to ladies; and the escort was a little over ten thousand ounces last week.’
‘You don’t say so?’ said Mr. Branksome; ‘three thousand ounces more than last week. Why, how much do you intend to get at by the end of the year?’
‘Several, rich leads have been discovered lately,’ said the Commissioner, with a slight air of importance. ‘If they find a deeper deposit below the basalt, as many of the experienced miners think likely, we shall eclipse California.’
‘How very interesting,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, much excited by proximity to a novel and recent development of colonial industry; ‘I suppose you find great difficulty in managing such an immense and disorderly concourse.’
‘If they were disorderly we simply could not manage them,’ said the representative of the Queen’s Government. ‘We have about an average of one constable to a thousand men. Moral force, applied with discretion and firmness, suffices for all purposes of rule and coercion. Besides, the miners, as a rule, are well-educated men, and such populations are always manageable.’
‘Why so?’ inquired Ernest. ‘I should have thought that they were easily led away by designing persons.’
‘The contrary is the case,’ said the experienced proconsul. ‘Without stating that there are always among the miners gentlemen and graduates of the university, a considerable proportion consists of well-educated, travelled, sagacious men. These leaven the mass; and having strong convictions themselves upon all subjects, they are amenable to argument—to logic—which comprehends justice. It is an ignorant population which follows the demagogue like sheep; it is the uncultivated mind which is at the mercy of every specious lie which is offered to it.’
‘Then crime is rare,’ said Ernest, ‘and offences against life and property uncommon?’
‘Taking the numbers, one may aver, with safety, that crime is exceedingly infrequent. At the same time I cannot deny that the police charges are tolerably numerous. But in case of serious offences we have the main body of miners on the side of law and order, and the criminal rarely eludes the arm of the law.’
By this time they had neared the outskirts of the town, and Ernest was much pleased with the many neat cottages, surrounded by trim gardens, which they passed. Among these stood an exceedingly small but faultlessly neat dwelling, surrounded by a garden filled with vegetables, the profuse growth of which was due to a small stream of water which had been ingeniously led from the neighbouring hills. The owner, whose attire, though suitable for working, was marked by the exceptional neatness which pervaded the establishment, leaned upon his spade and gazed calmly upon thecortègeas it passed along the winding forest track.
‘How pleasant a sight it is,’ said Ernest, ‘to see one man, at least, superior to the mad thirst for gold which is common to this eager population. How contentedly that gardener devotes himself to the occupation in which he has probably passed his former life, and which, without holding out any splendid prize, no doubt provides him with a certain and ample subsistence.’
‘I should say,’ said Mr. Branksome, ‘that your recluse has probably lost his all at a gold venture, and is from circumstances compelled to rusticate, literally, until he makes a fresh start.’
The Goldfields Commissioner smiled, but made no remark, as he rode close up to the palings of the garden and reined in his horse.
The gardener left his work and advanced to the fence, apparently to hold converse with the important official—a man at that time possessed of enormous power and irresponsible control.
‘Hallo, De Bracy!’ said the latter, ‘how are you getting on? Weather too hot for the green peas? Asparagus pretty forward?’
‘Shocking weather, altogether,’ said the horticulturist, advancing to the barrier and shaking hands with the Commissioner. ‘If it were not for my irrigation I should be ruined and undone. Splendid thing, water!’
The Colonel and Ernest, with the young ladies, had by this time ridden close up, and were regarding the somewhat exceptional ‘grower,’ whose sunburnt hands exhibited much delicacy of shape and careful treatment, while his extremely handsome face and figure told unmistakably of long acquaintance with thehaute voléeof the world’s best society.
‘Are you going to the bachelors’ ball to-morrow night?’ asked the Commissioner. ‘Great muster, and no end of young ladies.’
‘Well, I may look in for an hour if I can get these cauliflowers properly earthed up in time,’ said this anomalous member at once of the gay and workaday world. ‘You know the season is so forward that I dare not give them another hour.’
‘Great God!’ said the Colonel, ‘why, it’s De Bracy! Why, Brian, old boy, what, in the name of all that is impossible, brings you here?’
Ernest turned at the exclamation, and saw that the Colonel’s bold features had changed, and were working like those of a man who sees some visitant from the silent land—is confronted by an unreal presence that stirs his inmost soul and curdles the very life blood.
The young ladies stand, pale with surprise.
‘Oh, it’s you, Billy Branks,’ said the provider of esculents. ‘Come down from India? Nearly as hot here, eh? Well, I lost all my money in mining enterprises; the finest substitute for unlimited loo I ever fell across. And having absolutely nothing, and being far from the land of friends, bill discounters, and outfitters, why, I took to gardening.Il faut vivre, you know; and I was always fond of dabbling in amateur handicrafts.’
‘Splendid life, beautiful weather, not too cold; shouldn’t mind it a bit; make heaps of money, I’m sure!’ said the Colonel incoherently. ‘But oh! Brian, old fellow, I never thought I should see youworkingfor your living.’
‘Why not, my dear boy?’ said the philosopher of the spade coolly. ‘What does the old Roman poet say—furcae amor honestus est et liber—stick to your knife and fork, and all that. Horace has no doubt on the subject. This is my Sabine farm, and there is the Fons Bandusiae, for a time—glad to say—at any rate, for a time—the pre-remittance stage. It’s safer than billiards, and more creditable than whist—as a livelihood.’
‘True, by Jove!’ said the Colonel, ‘most honourable and all that. But the fellows at the Rag would never believe it, if I go back and tell them that I saw Brian de Bracy growing vegetables and living by it, by gad.’
‘Tell ’em every word of it, Billy, old boy,’ said the wholly unabashed and true descendant of Adam, squaring his shoulders and displaying his symmetrical figure. ‘Tell some of them to come out and try their luck here. It will do them a lot of good, make men of them, and keep them away from the bones.’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ assented the Colonel, hopelessly confused. ‘Most likely they’ll all come. Charming climate, splendid salad, and so on. Well, good-bye, old man. Sorry to see you looking so well. Oh lord! why didn’t the French Count kill you instead of your winging him, in that row about Ferraris, and stop this. Good gad!’
So saying, the warm-hearted warrior wrenched away his horse’s head and departed along the homeward track, inconsolable for at least a quarter of an hour, at the expiration of which time he unburdened his soul to the nearest niece as follows:—
‘Awful thing! poor Brian, wasn’t it? By gad, when I first recognised him, thought I should have fallen off my horse. Last time I saw him he was coming out of the Travellers’, in London, with a duke on one arm and the commander-in-chief on the other. Awful fuss always made about him. No swell within miles of him—at Ascot, Goodwood, and so on. Women reg’lar fought about him—handsomest man of his day. Shoot, ride, fence, everything, better than the best of the amateurs. And now, what’s he down to? By gad! it makes a baby of me.’ And the honest, kindly veteran looked as if a cambric handkerchief would have afforded him great comfort and relief under the circumstances.
‘Never mind, uncle,’ said the sympathising maiden, ‘you’ll see him at the ball to-morrow night, and I’ll dance with him—not that there’s much charity in that. You know how nicely he looks at night. There won’t be a man there to be compared with him.’
‘Of course I’ll go,’ said the Colonel, recovering himself as became a soldier, ‘and you may look me out a nice girl or two for a waltz. I don’tthinkI ever went to a ball at a diggings before.’
A pleasant ride home in the cool of the evening, comprising some æsthetic talk on the part of Ernest with the youngest daughter, and a sensational bit of horsemanship by the Colonel, who rode his horse over a stiff three-railer that Miss Branksome had denounced as dangerous, prepared the party for a very merry dinner, after which some dressing set in, and the whole party started for the ball in a high mail phaeton.
The mining township of Turonia, while tolerably open to criticism by day as to its architecture, with the kindly aid of shadow and moonbeam looked sufficiently imposing by night, with its long line of lighted street, its clanking engines and red-gleaming shift-fires.
The particular night chosen for the entertainment which the bachelors temporarily dwelling in and around the golden city of Turonia had provided, was of the clearest moonlight procurable. Undimmed, awful, golden, pure, in the wondrous dark-blue dome, glowed the thrones of the greater and the lesser kings of the night. The trees upon the swart hillsides were visible in fullest delicate tracery of leaf and branch, as at midday. Each trail in the red dusty roadpaths showed with magic pencilling of outline. The dark-mouthed cruel shafts, which lay as if watching for a prey on either side of the narrow roadway, were plainly visible to the most careless wayfarer. So it chanced that from cottage and villa, from farmhouse and home station, and even from less pretentious habitations than any of these, wended at the usual hour a concourse of joyous or pleasure-enduring visitants, not specially distinguishable in air, manner, or raiment from metropolitan devotees of similar tenets.
Pretty Mrs. Merryfield was there, whose husband, formerly in the navy, held as many shares in the Haul and Belay Reef as would at that time have enabled him to retire upon club life and whist for the rest of his days. Managing Mrs. Campion, with her three daughters (Janie Campion was not unlikely to be voted the belle of the evening), sailed in, imposing with bouquets all the way from Sydney, the fern sprigs, camellias, and moss rosebuds of which were marvels of freshness. Little Campion and his partner, George Bowler, were driving a roaring trade as auctioneers, and a cheque for fifty for the girls’ dresses and fal-lals was, he was pleased to say, ‘neither here nor there.’ The doctors, half a dozen, were chiefly married men, and contributed their full share to the feminine contingent. So did the four lawyers. Mining cases are perhaps the most interminable, complicated, and technical known in the records of litigation. The bankers were in great force and profusion. In mining towns they are necessarily numerous and competitive, and there are few departments of social accomplishments to which they may not lay claim. Thus many were the celebrities contributed by them that night—athletic champions, musical bankers, and bankers that danced, bankers that billiarded and whisted, bankers that ‘went in for beauty’ and preserved their complexions, and bankers that combined divers of these claims to consideration. In a general way it may be assumed that thejeunesse doréeof that inevitable profession numbers as many ‘good all-round men’ as could be taken at hazard from either of the services, military or naval—the metropolitan young-lady vote notwithstanding. Our ball yet had some distinctive features. Many of the irreproachably attired persons, there and then present, had spent the day in avocations which do not in a general way precede ball going. Jack Hardston had worked his own eight hours’ ‘shift’ that day, from 8 a.m. to 4 o’clock in the afternoon, in a ‘drive’ of considerable lateral penetration, at a distance of 160 feet from ‘upper air.’ After a light repast, a smoke, a swim in the Turonia, and a somewhat protracted and hazardous toilet, he asserted himself to be wound up exactly to concert pitch. Twice as fit indeed as when he carried the money of the men for the grand military pedestrian handicap. Mild little Mrs. Wynne had treated herself to the ball on the strength of Lloyd Watkyn having come ‘on the gutter’ in his claim at Jumper’s Gully in the early part of the week. So she finished up her baking and brewing, let us say, and having handed over the three-year-old Watkyn Williams, with many injunctions, to her neighbour Mrs. David Jones (also of the Principality), proceeded with her husband, ‘dressed for once like old times,’ as she said with a little sigh, to the hall of the great enchanter—even music—who hath power over body and soul, life and limb; who with a chord can call forth the tears of the past, the joys of the present. And very nice they looked.
Horace Sherrington was there—suave, correct, rather worn-looking, but incontestably ‘good form.’ He made a handsomer income by the exercise of his talents than those somewhat varied natural gifts had ever previously afforded him. Every evening he came to the camp mess, where the Government officials kept something like open house for all pleasant fellows who were ‘of ours’ in the former or the latter time. No one sang so good a song as Sherrington, was so racy araconteur, played a better hand at whist, had a surer cue at pool. But no one knew precisely how he spent his day, not that any one cared much. There were too many men of mark who had tried every employment on that goldfield for luck and honest bread, including the officials themselves, for them to affect any snobbish discrimination of avocations. But Horace did not volunteer the nature of his daily duties; he was not a miner, a speculator, a reefer, nor an engine-driver, a clerk, or puddler. His reticence piqued them. One day the police inspector’s horse shied at a man in a loose blue shirt and very clay-stained general rig, having also an immense sheaf of posters in his hand. ‘What the devil do you mean, my man, by flourishing these things in my horse’s face?’ growled the somewhat shaken autocrat. ‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ quoth the agent of intelligence, himself passing on. But it was too late. The lynx-eye settled upon him with unerring aim, like a backwoodsman’s rifle. Both men burst out laughing. The elegant and accomplished Horace was a bill-sticker! The festive concourse partook, in one respect at least, of classical and traditionary fitness. The sincere and fervid worshippers of Terpsichore held sacred revel in a temple—the Temple of Justice! For the large handsomely decorated hall, which resounded with the inspiriting clangour of a very passable brass band, was in good earnest the court-house of Turonia. By the simple process of removing the dock and draping the witness-box as a lamp stand, placing the musicians upon the magisterial bench, with, I hardly need to mention, a profuse exhibition of international bunting, a fairly ornamental and highly effective ballroom was secured.
It was generally believed, and indeed asserted by theTuronia Sentinel, that the Commissioner, who was known to bebeau valseur, had bribed the contractor, when completing that magnificent edifice, to bestow extra finish upon the flooring, with ulterior views as to its utilisation for society purposes. Be that as it may—and much gossip was current about that high and mighty official of which he took no heed—therewassome truth in a subsequent legend that a prisoner and the constable by whom he was being escorted to the dock on the following morning slipped and fell as heavily and unexpectedly upon the glassy floor as if they had been essaying the gliding graces of the rink for the first time.
When the Branksome Hall party drove up, the entertainment had commenced, and the two first dances having been got through, thegêneof all beginnings and early arrivals was evaded. The ladies having been first conducted for envelope-removing purposes into the jury-room, and the men’s overcoats and wideawakes deposited in the land office, the stewards with elaborate courtesy escorted them to the hall of dazzling delight.
The Commissioner, in blue and gold (at that period of Australian history these officials wore uniforms), looked most military and distinguished, his heavy drab moustache and decided cast of countenance suiting the costume extremely well. The second steward was a broad-shouldered, blonde, blue-eyed personage, whose singular talent for organisation caused his services to be in great request at all public demonstrations—social, military, legal, or ecclesiastical. He looked like a squatter or a naval man, but was in reality a bank manager. The third steward was a tall handsome man, very carefully attired, whose delicate features were partly concealed by an immense fair beard. His manner, his mien, his every look and gesture, told as plainly as words to any observer of his kind of foreign travel, of ‘the service’ in early life of that occasional entire dependence upon personal resources which has been roughly translated as ‘living by his wits.’ On his brow was the imprint writ large, in spite of the faultless toilet, finished courtesy, the perfectaplomb, the half-unconsciousfiertéof his manner, the somewhat doubtfulafficheof adventurer.
Attended by these magnates, for whom way was made with ready respect, the Hall party sailed into the well-lighted, well-filled room with considerable prestige.
Ernest was considerably astonished at the general appearance of matters, while the Colonel openly expressed his admiration and satisfaction.
‘Gad, sir!’ he said to the Commissioner, ‘I had no idea that you were able to get up your dances in this fashion. What a field of neat well-bred-looking flyers—I mean deuced pretty girls, and monstrously well dressed too. Puts me in mind of one of our Hurryghur dances. We used to have such jolly spurts at the old station before that cursed Mutiny spoiled everything.’
Mr. Neuchamp thought it was not so very much less imposing in appearance than a ball in Sydney; room not so big; perhaps a trifling flavour of the provinces.
But the Bombay galop having struck up, the Colonel possessed himself of a partner of prepossessing appearance, through the good offices of the Commissioner, and sailed off at a great pace. Ernest lost no time in appropriating the eldest Miss Branksome, and reflection was merged in sensation.
‘I suppose you hardly expected to have any ball-going in this particular spot,’ said he to his partner, ‘a few years ago.’
‘We should just as soon have expected to go to the opera and hear Tietjens,’ said Miss Branksome. ‘I have often ridden over this very spot with papa, and seen the wild horses feeding on the hill where the town now stands.’
‘And you like the change?’
‘I can’t say that we did at first. We fancied, I suppose, that the great invading army of diggers would eat us up, and we resented their intrusion. But they turned out very amiable wild beasts, and one advantage we certainly did not calculate upon.’
‘What is that, may I ask?’
‘The number of nice people that would accompany the army. Our society is ten times as large and pleasant as in old times. We are hardly a night without quite a small party of visitors. You see there are the commissioners, magistrates, bankers, and other officials, all gentlemen and mostly pleasant. Besides, the gold attracts visitors, like yourself, for instance.’
After a very satisfactory fast and unaffectedly performed galop, the susceptible Colonel joined them at the refreshment table, accompanied by a young lady with a wild-rose complexion and great dark eyes, who had been evidently dancing at a pace which had caused that mysterious portion of herchevelureknown (I am informed) as ‘back hair’ to fall in glossy abundance over her fair shoulders.
‘Splendid floor, Bessy,’ he said to his niece. ‘Capital music—partner beyond all praise!’ (Here the young lady looked up with smiling reproach.) ‘Fact! haven’t had such a dance since the last ball at Calcutta. There were two duels next day—about a young lady, of course’ (here the small damsel looked much concerned)—‘and poor O’Grady, who had heart complaint, but couldn’t control his feelings at a ball, died within the week.’
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ said the little maiden, with a sincere accent of distress. ‘But nobody dies after a ball here, or fights duels either, that I ever heard of. Why should they in India, Colonel Branksome?’
‘Can’t say,’ said the Colonel. ‘Let me give you a little champagne; heat of the climate, I suppose; too many soldiers, too few ladies.’
‘India must be a beautiful place, Colonel Branksome,’ observed the grave little damsel, looking out of her big eyes with an air of deliberate conviction.
‘Glorious, splendid; that is, most infernal hole—hot, dull, miserable—full of niggers. Hope I may never stay another year in it. Get my pension, I hope, when I get back and settle up with the remount agent. After that, if they ever catch Billy Branksome out of England again, they may make a Punkah-wallah of him.’
‘Good gracious, Colonel Branksome!’ said the matter-of-fact danseuse, who now looked as cool as if she had been walking a minuet. ‘I thought all soldiers were fond of India. Oh! there’s that dear old Captain de Bracy.’
‘Gad! so it is,’ said the Colonel. ‘Look at him, Bessy, strolling in, and bowing to every woman he knows, as if he was at a ball at the Tuileries. Gad! Ididsee him there last. And what do you think he was doing?—why, dancing in a set with two crowned heads and four princesses of the blood. He and Charles Standish made up the set; by gad!’
‘Oh, doesn’t he look like a nobleman?’ said thedebutanteenthusiastically, opening her innocent eyes and feasting on De Bracy’s middle-aged charms. ‘And oh, what lovely, wonderful studs!’
‘So you’re here, Master Billy, as usual?’ said the object of this highly favourable criticism. ‘Couldn’t keep away from a ball if your life depended upon it. Old enough to know better, ain’t he, Miss Maybell? Happy to see you all here to-night. Not afraid of the stumps and holes? I’m well enough, thanks, Miss Maybell; heardyouwere coming, and though I seldom go out now—I am here.’
‘Oh, Captain de Bracy!’ said little Miss Maybell, perfectly overwhelmed with the compliment to her unworthy small self (as she erroneously held, underrating her fresh and innocent beauty), and mentally comparing De Bracy’s appearance with that of a print of the Chevalier Bayard which was among her treasures at home.
A great tidal wave of promenading couples overwhelmed and dispersed thepartie carréefor a while, so that they were compelled to make arrangements for the next dance, which happened to be adeux-tempswaltz. Having relinquished Miss Branksome to De Bracy, and seen pretty little Miss Maybell carried off by young Tom Branksome, who recommended his uncle to try Mrs. Campion, as being a fine woman and of a suitable age, Ernest found, rather to his surprise, that he was a little late, as every possible partner for a fast dance had been secured. The fact was, that the proportion of the sexes was in the inverse ratio to what generally obtains at balls in a more settled state of society. Therefore, more than average alacrity and foresight was necessary to ensure a regular succession of partners.
As Mr. Neuchamp, smiling to himself at his involuntary state of injured feelings, sauntered towards the refreshment room, he met the steward, who had been introduced to him by the Commissioner as Mr. Lionel Greffham.
‘You don’t seem to be dancing,’ he said; ‘well, it is rather a bore, after the first turn or two. Bright and I are having a glass of champagne; will you join us?—it is “number two.”’
There was such an evident desire to be civil on Mr. Greffham’s part that Ernest, who had not at first regarded him with perfect approval, felt moved to respond to so friendly an accost. He found Mr. Bright in the supper room, in conversation with a well-dressed, quiet, but not the less striking-looking personage, who was introduced as the district inspector of police, Mr. Merlin.
‘What do you think of society on the diggings?’ said Mr. Bright to Ernest; ‘hardly what you would have expected?’
‘It is utterly wonderful,’ said Ernest. ‘I am perfectly amazed at the order and decorum which everywhere prevail, and even at the elegant and enjoyable party to-night—so many nice people you seem to have.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Merlin, ‘nothing is more wonderful, as you say. Thereareso many extremely nice people here. So well worth knowing. People who have such noble, disinterested views, eh, Greffham?’
‘I quite agree with you,’ answered that gentleman. ‘But it’s rather a bore we can’t have a little whist, isn’t it? A quiet rubber, or a game at billiards, would be much more sensible than all this capering with a lot of people that, in any other part of the world, you wouldn’t dream of speaking to.’
‘Surely not,’ said Ernest; ‘some of our friends here are of unimpeachableton, and for the rest they appear to be of very fair average standing. I am very much pleased with the whole affair.’
‘Greffham is fastidious, and plays the Sybarite among his other characters,’ said the inspector slowly and distinctly. ‘He suffers much here when the rose leaves are unavoidably crumpled. So much depends upon a man’s antecedents.’
‘I don’t know that I am more fastidious than others,’ he said, smiling, though the eye, that infallible referee in facial expression, did not agree with his amused expression. ‘You know thatyou, Master Merlin, rather agree with me than otherwise. But seriously, suppose we go over to the Occidental and have a game of billiards. Oceans of time; these misguided Turonians will dance for hours yet.’
The proposition met with general approval, and Mr. Neuchamp assented, not that he cared about billiards, at which he was only a middling performer, but he felt the inexplicable influence of the strange scene and novel surroundings, and was more inclined than ordinarilydesipere in loco.
The four acquaintances crossed the street, which was filled, as far as they could see, with a surging crowd of men, chiefly attired in the ordinary dress of miners. Shops brilliantly lighted, and of imposing appearance as to their fronts, lined the long, narrow, and not altogether straight street. Mr. Neuchamp thought he had never seen such an assemblage of intelligent-looking men. Evidently the flower of the working classes, while from all the trades and professions a large proportion had been lured to Turonia by the golden possibilities of the great rush. What amazed Ernest chiefly was the astonishing order and polite behaviour of this vast concourse of people, containing presumably the ruffianism of all lands under the sun. He had seen mobs in the British towns and cities and in other parts of the world. In all these gatherings he had occasionally encountered rough usage, had heard much foul language, and had suffered risk or loss of personal belongings.
But in this strange crowd no conduct other than of mutual respect and courtesy was observable. Rarely a word to which objection could be taken fell on the ear. The press parted and permitted the four gentlemen to walk through as independently as though they were the Dowager Patroness at a charitable institution. The brilliantly-lighted bars at the numerous hotels were certainly full, but there seemed to be more talking than consumption of liquor, and the spectacle of drunken men was altogether absent. A few police constables, unobtrusively placed, denoted that the Imperial Government, so calm, so impartial, yet so long of arm and sure of grasp, was represented. Otherwise it looked very much as if the great heterogeneous mass of humanity, now turning up the precious metal at Turonia at the rate of a couple of tons of gold per quarter, was permitted to manage itself. This was by no means the case, as Mr. Merlin could have explained. An unsparing crusade was organised against all manner of open vice and crime. No quarter was given or respite permitted. Passing through the bar, among the occupants of which Ernest did not observe any one to carry a revolver, or to make as though the good-humoured landlord was likely to be, without notice, ‘one of the deadest men that ever lived,’ they reached a large, well-lighted room, where two handsome new billiard tables were in full swing. As they sat down on the cushioned benches which lined the room, a young fellow in a blue shirt and clay-stained trousers made a break of twenty-seven, and thereby won the game in a style which showed that he had not devoted all his life to mining industry. The marker promptly signalled to Mr. Greffham. He and Ernest then took possession of the vacated table.
There is no doubt that at certain times an electrical tone pervades not only the physical but the moral atmosphere, affecting to depression or exaltation the mind of man, that subtle reflex of the most delicate external influence. Such a night was this. The music of the band was pealing from the opposite side of the street—the vast, surging, excited, but self-contained crowd presented the strangest contrasts of society, as akin to the rudest types of life in certain aspects, so near to Utopian models in advanced manners and intelligent consent. Even the scraps of conversation which found their way to Ernest’s ear were of a novel and fairy-legendary nature.
‘Made eight hundred pounds in ten days out of that bit of “surface,” Jem did; I sold a share in Green Gully, No. 5, for three drinks last week, and now they’ve struck gold and want a thousand for it. Commissioner settled that dispute to-day at Eaglehawk.’
‘Who got number seven block?’
‘Well, Red Bill, and his crowd; it’s on good gold too.
‘What did Big George say?’
‘Oh, he was pretty wild, but he couldn’t do nothing, of course.’
‘I’ll take three hundred and half out of the ground for a share in number two,’ and so on, and so on.
Mr. Neuchamp had come on to the long-disputed territory, ‘Tom Tidler’s ground,’ and the ‘demnition gold’ (if not silver) was sticking out of the soil everywhere. Ten-pound notes were handed across the bar for change as readily as half-crowns. Nuggets worth from £50 to £100 were passed about in the crowd for inspection with the most undoubting good faith and confidence in the collective honesty of mining mankind.
Under these conditions, it was a night for bold and reckless conception, a night when the ordinary prudences and severities of conscience might be calmly placed behind the perceptions, and the ‘fore-soul’ be permitted to leap forth and disport in the glorious freedom of the instincts and original faculties.